Power Grab Feedback

I’m trying to add a prologue where you are younger, to give more context to what leads you to this life of crime. It is still in first person. Would this be better in present or past tense? Any preference?

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You should keep the tense the same throughout the game.

Alright, thanks for the advice!

I originally set up the beginning paragraphs to be a mood setter and tell the player the state of the world and the situation the MC is in. Someone suggested to me that it was too boring and they’d prefer if it were more interactive, so I was thinking of letting you play through MC’s childhood a bit before the main story line. But someone else stated how they enjoy that it currently jumps right into the exciting thieving. What do you guys think would be more interesting to play?

Thievery, we already know the mc’s childhood was even more miserable than their situation prior to being enslaved. So I think for that tell, not show, may be better than the opposite. From what is already in the game we know that the mc’s brother had everything on a silver platter and everybody on their side, including the asshole father and the mc had nothing and nobody.
Unless of course you plan on this being primarily a game for villain mc’s in which case I guess showing even more mc misery would help for a start of darkness kinda theme. :thinking:

Of course, going forward, the absolutely truly frightening realisation is that if the mc can merely steal powers our brother can probably actually create any power imaginable making him potentially into a literal god. Let’s hope he never realises he may be able to create more than he thinks. :fearful:

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@LordHavoc, I personally prefer it as is, because doing the childhood scene sound nice. But its just going to stretch the MC’s introduction which in my own opinion it will just either make the story sort of laggy or plain annoying, if you intend to do the story of the adult life of the MC stick with it. In super power stories it’s best to just give the narrator the microphone and let them give the background (childhood) story of the MC. Since the main focus is the present or future “me” and not the past “me”. Hope this is helpful in anyway.:smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :blush: But your choice end of the day and I’ll still read it at the end of that day.:relaxed:
PS. To anyone offended as I said it’s (“my own opinion”) so if you might have a different preference good on you.:grin:

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Alright, it seems like the general consensus is to leave out a prologue, so I’ve stopped writing it. I was having fun writing it, though, so perhaps I’ll one day finish it up and leave it as a bonus scene for anyone interested.

In other news, I finally fixed up that scene with the guy whose watch you stole. Hopefully you guys prefer it now. (I also realised that I accidentally deleted that whole final chapter on Dashingdon for a bit there, so I’ve finally put that back.) Fixing up that scene left the code in a bit of a mess, so hopefully everything works smoothly and I didn’t end up combining scenes that shouldn’t be together. Let me know if anything that happens there doesn’t make sense, and I’ll get right on fixing it.

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Oh hey, I’d seen this on dashingdon some time ago and checked in again to see if there was a forum post made when I saw it was updated. Happy to be able to add this in my library :smiley:

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Should I put up a list of characters that will show up in the game, or should I leave them out until I introduce them so as to avoid spoilers?

Might be a good idea and can you show their ability too ? I don’t want to destroy our relationship with someone just for useless power

I don’t want to intentionally give out spoilers. Not yet, at least. I just thought that people might want to know the list of characters to see if any intrigue them.

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I have some ideas for other paths that I’d love to write out eventually. I just don’t want to start writing paths before I know how I’ll end them. Once I work out more details, I’ll go to earlier chapters and add new paths to them. (For example, a path where you only steal from bad people.) For now, though, I’m just focusing on the paths I already have planned.

This is my first project, so I don’t want to overwhelm myself by starting a lot of paths that I don’t know how to follow up on.

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Please don’t overwhelm yourself that’s how most writers just give up due to the stress. So I agree with you, just write what you want first then fix and adjust later once the stress of writing as whole is over. :grin:

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I would love a list of characters :+1::slightly_smiling_face:

I added a list of some of the characters for now, but I might get rid of it later. Hopefully adding it doesn’t take away from the story. Hope you like it!

What sounds better. Different paths giving you different main characters, or having all paths introduce you to the same set of characters, so that nobody misses out on any people they might like? (The second option is easier, but I thought I’d ask opinions first.)

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Second option!!! :smiley:

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The second, if you can utilise your full cast to maximum effect while simultaneously saving yourself a good bit of work I say do it.

I vote for putting them in. If you really don’t like them afterwards you can always take them out prior to publication…but I think that is preferable to wondering how it would have turned out if you left them in.
Still, your call, if you want to keep this one kid friendly at all costs then don’t do it, if rating is less of a concern then go for it.

I would suggest putting in a few more options to play the mc a bit a smarter. For a thief the mc seems pretty dumb to me at the moment, while impersonating his brother is something the blackmailers force you to do and thus inescapable I really don’t think my mc needs to draw more attention to himself by stealing the power to…float?
It is a minor power that isn’t worth risking any more exposure to the wider world, the government and our brother…especially if our sibling has government ties.

Also right now, while my mc is by no means a truly nice guy I don’t like how we are basically forced to be cruel to that poor Levi kid. So I’d like some options to treat him more respectfully as right now he is the first and only ally the mc has got who is there of his own volition.

If you decide to go for the darker paths then cruelty certainly has a place, although my mc likes to reserve it for his blackmailers, his brother and the government his brother serves, and maybe the socialite airheads frequenting our sibling’s soirees.
For the rest you don’t need to be a nice guy to realise you catch more flies with honey, even if you have to fake most of it. And since the power stealing mc is basically a colossal fake the latter shouldn’t prove too difficult.

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I keep thinking of really dark things that can happen in the story depending on your choices (for example [TW] Self harm and suicide). I’m currently thinking that I should probably leave them out and keep this story (relatively) kid friendly, but some people thought it might be more interesting to put them in the story, so I thought I’d ask what people here would prefer. (Unless there is a limit to how dark a story is allowed to be on this site?)

I’d prefer the darker option it would be interesting and understandable for the mc to be able to have a darker path because of what has happened to the mc

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